He was born in Britain and educated at the University of Cambridge and Princeton University; before moving to Harvard in 2004, he taught for eleven years at Columbia University. A prize-winning teacher and writer, he has lectured on six continents and has held research fellowships and visiting positions in Australia, Britain, China, France, Germany, South Korea and the United States.

He co-edits two book series with Cambridge University Press, Ideas in Context and Cambridge Oceanic Histories, and he is a Syndic of the Harvard University Press and a member of the Steering Committee of the Center for the History of British Political Thought at the Folger Shakespeare Library. In 2006, the National Maritime Museum in London awarded him its Caird Medal for “conspicuously important work ... of a nature that involves communicating with the public” and in 2008 Harvard named him a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow for “achievements and scholarly eminence in the fields of literature, history or art”. In 2015, he received Cambridge University's highest degree, the LittD, for “distinction by some original contribution to the advancement of science or of learning”. He is a Corresponding Member of the Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.